Restaurants are increasingly faced with the challenge of serving the very best foods in a very short time frame to meet the needs of the consuming public. In addition, there is often the need to serve large numbers of people in high traffic areas in a cost effective manner.
In the early part of the last century, a concept was introduced to the restaurant industry called “The Automat”. These restaurants which appeared in the New York City and Philadelphia area were capable of serving food, which by the standards of the day, was considered very good. Perhaps more importantly, these restaurants were capable of serving food in relatively short time frames to large numbers of people in busy metropolitan areas. To achieve these objectives, “The Automat” restaurants of that era employed small enclosures with glass doors where food from the kitchen was delivered to the customers. The doors would only open when a customer inserted a coin in a slot thereby allowing the food to be retrieved from the enclosure.
While “The Automat” restaurant of its day was considered state of the art, aspects of the food delivery system would be considered antiquated by today's standards. First, current health laws do not permit heated food to stand for any length of time before serving. It would therefore be impossible to deliver hot food to an enclosure for an indeterminate period of time before a patron inserts his or her nickel to retrieve the food from the enclosure. Second, the use of coins would be cumbersome given the cost of food as compared with the low value of coinage today. Third, while the old “Automat” restaurants did serve food expeditiously for the time, today's world operates at a much faster pace, especially in high traffic areas.
Yet, the basic concept of delivering high quality food to restaurant patrons from small enclosures in high traffic areas remains appealing today if health law issues, payment/currency issues and speed of delivery issues could somehow be addressed.